The Ties That Bind
by Iwriteblackpeople
Summary: OC. AU. Bonnie Bennett has taken a dive off into the dark end, dipping too deep into dark magic has left her there. Stefan and Damon, determined to find a way to bring her back, do a little searching and they find Rashel, an old friend with more connections to Virginia than any of them had imagined.


OC, AU.

Rashel Evans was the last of her family, or so she thought.

* * *

Chapter 1: U R Fever.

Rashel Evans enjoys the crack of her bones when she stretches her arms above her head, sighing contentedly before busying her hands with the task of counting the cash tips she owes Melissa. Melissa too busy fiddling with her cell phone, scrolling with her thumbs as she sits at the bar, isn't really paying attention to the fact that Rashel is butchering the lyrics to a The Kills song. Rashel exchanges the 25 dollar bills Melissa gave her, for a twenty and a five dollar bill. Leaning against the bar she passes the two bills to the other girl. Melissa accepts the bills, thrusting them into her purse, careless of taking the time to put them in her wallet. She finally puts her cell phone away, leaning forward.

"Are you sure you don't want to catch a ride home with Ash and me?" She asks, pushing her arms through the sleeves of her cardigan, covering her bare arms from the chilly Michigan summer night.

"I have about another hour of closing up left here and it's already 3 AM." Rashel says, tilting her head a little, attempting to guess the song playing now from the first few riffs. "I couldn't keep you and Ash, you guys already did me a favor by coming in when you were off of work."

"If you're sure." Melissa says, climbing down from the bar stool. She adjusts the strap of her bag, throwing a two fingered salute over her shoulder. "Lock up after me!" She calls.

Rashel quickly follows after her, waiting until Melissa makes it into the car that sits idle at the curb, Ash giving a small shadowed wave from the passenger seat.

"Send me a text when you make it home." Melissa stops in front of the squat brick building to say. " I mean it Shelly!" She says, her eyes narrowed as she points an accusing finger at her friend and co-worker.

"I promise!" Rashel calls after her, waiting until the small blue car moves away from the curb and disappears out of her vision. With a groan she turns back to the bar, pushing her bangs out of her face. Her night was no where near over.

The bar belonged to her family, or at least it did. Her grandfather had been the last living relative she had and his declining health due to his penchant to smoke cigars and cigarettes had left her caring for his bar in his death. He'd also left her quite a sum of money, so far enough to take care of her tuition for the university and keep the bar open. She'd be a liar to say that she didn't miss him every time she came into this place, smelling the familiar scent of his cigars in the office. He had made running this place look so easy, and she'd basically spent every day of her life here, coming here after school in junior high for food, and working as a waitress in high school. Now wearing the hat he'd vacated as owner of Second's Cafe, she'd been spending more than just time after classes here, she'd made the apartment above the bar her second home. Taking the time to lift the chairs unto the table tops so she can mop, singing along with the words to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, she almost misses the light sound of denim jeans rubbing against each other, a bottle being lifted from the display.

Standing upright, her left hand steady on the chair, she twists her body toward the bar, thrusting her right hand in front of her, the hilt of the knife leaving her hand as soon as she turns.

He catches it, snatching it from the air between them, setting the knife on the granite of the bar before busying himself with the task of fixing a glass of scotch. "Shelly, long time no see."

"_My _name is Rashel." She sneers. "Don't you dare call me anything else." She glances to her right.

"Stefan." She gives him a once over, he looks exactly the same, a simple long sleeved henley, dark jeans and boots the only thing that strikes her as weird is the envelope sticking out of his back pocket, she quickly turns her head away from him.

"Rashel."

"Great, now that everyone is reaquainted." Damon Salvatore begins, throwing back a shot of tequila. He leans on the granite and dark wood bar. "Time for business."

"We have no business, Salvatores." Rashel says, lifting the last chair onto the table before moving to the bar. She doesn't feel comfortable sitting around them. She doesn't feel comfortable doing anything around them that will leave her vulnerable. "I don't do business with people I don't trust." She tries her best not to step away from Stefan Salvatore when he stands at the bar beside her.

"What do you want?" She asks them. "I have shit to do and you're wasting my precious time."

"We need your help." Stefan Salvatore actually opens his mouth to say and there's a brief pause where Rashel stares openly between the two men, wondering if it were possible for her to have ended up as a contestant on a hidden camera show. Where was the automated applause and laughter? Where was the older white man with a skinny microphone telling her that she was winning a boat trip to the Islands, to go ahead and pack that yellow polka dot bikini?

"Merde." She mutters. "You come into my grandfather's bar unannounced and have the audacity to ask me for help?" She laughs, running a hand through her bang.

"Why don't you be honest and tell us what this anger is really about?" Damon Salvatore asks. She's always thought him physically attractive, and always wondered how good he'd look if he never spoke. Damon's eyes dart to his brother then back to Rashel, a smirk forming on his pink lips.

"Damon." Stefan says, turning to his brother.

"Have you guys talked since, well you know?" Damon asks, enjoying the way that Stefan and Rashel don't make eye contact, how she addresses most of her annoyance to him instead of relaying anything to Stefan.

"What do you want?" Rashel repeats fiercely, arms folded under her breast and Damon can't help his eyes when they fall to her chest, admiring the deep V of her long sleeved T-shirt.

"We need a witch."

"You _need _to stop burning bridges, and killing people when they've completed their use for you."

"Rashel, we're here to help a friend." Stefan says and she rolls her eyes at the soothing sound of his voice, how quiet and calm he was in comparison to his loud and troubled brother. "She dipped too far into dark magic and..."

"Could potentinally be killing herself, but only after she takes everyone else down first."

"Sounds like a fun time to me." Rashel says, a small smile fixing on her red painted lips.

"She's seventeen years old and she doesn't have anyone else to guide her." Stefan says and Rashel finally allows her eyes to slip to him. "We thought-"

"_He_ thought that you would be able to help her. Pull her back from the dark side."

"So to speak." Stefan says. Rashel isn't sure if it's his words, the admiration in his voice, the care that makes her want to help him save this girl, or maybe it's because it's Stefan and he's been a weak spot since she met him years ago, when she was just sixteen and clueless.

"Alright." She says softly. "Where is she?" She asks them, frowning as Damon fixes himself another drink. "Those aren't on the house."

"Mystic Falls, Virginia." Stefan tells her. "Her name is Bonnie Bennett."

"Virginia." Rashel repeats. "And what, I leave everything here behind to come help you, to come help her?" Her mind moved to her grandfather, lying prone in a hospital bed, the only thing he had left happened to be Rashel and this bar and since he'd died all she had left of him, of her family happened to be this bar she was running.

"Look, I understand you need my help but-"

"We did our research on your family, you're birth family." Damon interrupts her. "Your real name is Mary McCullough." He tells her. "This girl we're asking you to save, to help is your little sister."

The look Stefan gives Damon isn't lost on her, how he grinds his teeth together and balls his fist. They'd intially been searching high and love for another family member of Bonnie's. Her mother was deemed useless since she'd become a vampire and the last thing Bonnie wanted was to listen to her. Her cousin Lucy was a nomad and never really cared for responsibility. Her father Rudy had lost all determination and hope he'd had for saving Bonnie. But with the last of his hope, he'd been cooperative enough to give Stefan a detailed family tree and history, praying that there was a witch in the Bennett line willing to pull the young girl from darkness.

They'd stumbled upon a name, an old girlfriend of Rudy's named Sarah McCullough from highschool. The name McCullough struck something familiar within Damon Salvatore. She was a witch, the McCullough line being just as strong and reputable as the Bennetts and more research had led to Adoption records, Sarah McCullough had given her two year old daughter up from adoption when she was just 20 years old. A year before she'd been murdered. That daughter had been adopted by a nice woman, incapable of having children of her own by the name of Karen Evans and her husband David Evans. Both of whom had died in a car crash when Rashel Evans had only been 15.

"My real name is Rashel Evans- H-how did you even get to any information about my birth parents, huh? How do you find shit like that?" She asks him, her anger making her brown skin look inflamed as her face reddens. How did they get their hands unto information she'd been searching for since she was eleven?

"We didn't burn all of our bridges." Damon answers and Rashel wants so badly to reach across that bar and slap that smug grin off of his face.

"How do I know you aren't lying to me?" _Again? _She doesn't say it but hangs there in the air and they all know it.

"I wouldn't lie to you about your family Rashel." Stefan says, his voice smooth like the bourbon Damon was currently throwing back. "Bonnie _is_ your sister." She holds his gaze, allowing the green of his eyes to take her in. The ringing of a cell phone breaks their stare, and Stefan clears his throat to glance at Damon, his brow furrowing when he answers it.

"Elena, to what do I owe this pleasure?" Damon asks as he steps out of the room, exagerrating an eye roll as he passes Stefan.

When Damon stands outside walking back and forth on his cell phone, Stefan leans closer to Rashel, speaking in a hushed tone. "I'm sorry." He says and she looks away from him. Not really ready to reopen old wounds.

"W-who are my parents?" She asks him, ashamed at how weak her voice sounds.

"Sarah McCullough and Rudy Hopkins." He tells her. "They were seniors in highschool. Rudy just appeared again in Bonnie's life and when I found out you guys were related I knew you'd want to know."

"The sixteen year old Rashel would have wanted to know, Stefan." She tells him. "The twenty year old Rashel is okay."

"See," Stefan says standing upright, he pulls the sleeves of his t-shirt up to his elbows. "I don't believe that."

"Oh, because you know me so well?" Rashel asks him, forcing a laugh. He reaches into his back pocket, retrieving the envelope he sets it on the bar between them, leaning on the back of the bar stools, he taps the envelope with one finger.

"I know you well enough to know that this is something you've been searching for for years, that just because you've come up empty handed, over and over again would never stop you." He tells her. "It's been a while Rashel, but I don't forget."

She swallows hard, breaking his eye contact, her eyes on his long slim finger on the top of the envelope. Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth and her eyes burn a little. She doesn't want to cry, not in front of him. She closes her eyes, inhaling deeply.

"We'll be in town for another night or two." Stefan says when Damon enters the bar again, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. "It'll give you time." She doesn't speak, eyes still trained on the envelope, his hand long gone. She breaks her stare, turning to glance around the bar, to ask them what makes them so sure she'll help, but they're gone.

And she's alone again in the bar.

Emotions arise and she loses the mood for old rock ballads, rubbing her deep brown eyes with the back of her hand as she stops the AC/DC song and walks back around the bar, settling into the bar stool with a sigh. She lifts the envelope finding it thicker and heavier than she'd originally thought. She looks at the bar, half of the chairs still needed stacking but she was no longer in the mood to clean. A quick check of her watch let her know it was already 5 AM. A quick check of the doors let her know that the Salvatore brothers were kind enough to lock the door before disappearing. Stuffing the envelope into her purse and throwing her jacket over her arm, she turns off the lights and heads through the door on the side of the building. The door led to a hallway rather than a closet like she'd first thought when she'd first began working at the bar. The hall way had another door, one that led outside and a set of stairs that led to the apartment she sometimes spent her time.

A hot shower and change into a loose t-shirt hadn't lessened the heavy feeling on Rashel's mind and heart, her fingers itched to know what that envelope held and she cursed Stefan for still knowing her so well. Settling onto the bed, legs folded under her bottom she lifted the envelope and untied the red string allowing the contents to spill unto the bed.

Pictures of her mother, father and grandparents, family pictures of a sweet middle waged white family before her brown skin and deep brown almond eyes took place among the blonde and blue eyed mass. She smiles when she sees the picture of herself with her mother and father, they'd taken the picture before she had started her freshman year of highschool, before family pictures like this became uncool to her. Another picture, it's back side up on the surface of the dark green duvet, has the letters R & S, 1992 on it. She flips the picture, allowing herself to take in the image of a tall black man with beautiful light colored eyes in a basketball jersey, with his arm thrown over the shoulders of a white woman with hair as black as night and eyes the color of the ocean. Smiles permanant on their faces.

These were her real parents. Sarah McCullough and Rudy Hopkins, just seniors in highschool. Rashel wonders how far along Sarah was in the photo. She wore overalls, and Rashel's sure those hid a growing belly well. She'd been born in 1993, June of 1993 to be exact. So this picture had to have been taken earlier in the school year.

Rashel releases a shaky sigh, eyes fixed on those of Sarah McCullough as she wonders why she'd given her up and how had she died only two years later? At the young age of twenty.

She sets the picture aside, unconciously setting the picture with the other two pictures on her left before she lifts a piece of paper, still neat and stark white.

"Adoption papers." She says aloud, unfolding the paper to read the names. Her mother listed as Sarah McCullough, no father named. Adoptive parents listed as Karen and David. Childs name listed as Mary McCullough.

And despite the heaviness of the news, of the knowledge Stefan and Damon had given her, the only thing Rashel can think of before she neatly puts the papers from the envelope back into it, is why on Earth Sarah McCullough would give Rashel a name like Mary.


End file.
